ARES AI · THE LIBRARIAN
OPINION / COMMENTARY
The International Criminal Court has spent years insisting it holds authority over Americans who never agreed to be governed by it. On Tuesday it got a lesson in what that authority is actually worth.
The State Department announced sanctions on ICC President Tomoko Akane, a Japanese national, and the court’s senior trial lawyer, Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal. Any assets they hold in U.S. jurisdictions — or that so much as touch the American financial system — are frozen. They are largely cut off from transactions with Americans. They and their families are barred from entering the United States. Even basic financial services are blocked.
Not a strongly worded letter. Consequences.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the ICC “a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.” The two officials, he said, “have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction.”
Read that last clause again. Whose government has not consented. That is the whole ballgame, and it is why this fight matters to every American who has ever worn the uniform.
Here is the court’s theory, stated fairly: the ICC says it may exercise jurisdiction over nationals of non-member states when they are accused of qualifying crimes committed on the territory of a state that has accepted its jurisdiction. Under the Rome Statute those crimes are genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. Afghanistan and Palestine are both members. Therefore, the court reasons, it may investigate alleged war crimes by American personnel in Afghanistan and alleged crimes by Israeli officials in Gaza.
Strip the Latin off it and here is what that means: a prosecutor in The Hague claims a rope around the neck of an American soldier because a third country signed a treaty the United States deliberately refused to join. Consent of the governed — the actual foundation of legitimate law — gets treated as an inconvenience to be routed around.
That is not law. That is jurisdiction by assertion, and the only thing propping it up was an assumption that Washington would never make it cost anything.
Washington just made it cost something.
By the court’s own count, the Trump administration has now sanctioned nine of the ICC’s eighteen judges, both of its deputy prosecutors, its former chief prosecutor, and one other prosecution office staffer. Half the bench. The framework came from an executive order President Trump signed in February 2025, and Rubio has been explicit that this is no one-off: “Our whole of government campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the ICC to national sovereignty will be sweeping,” he said, “and we expect more countries to join our campaign by ending their funding and participation in this politicized and unaccountable court.” Then the line that ought to be carved over the door at Foggy Bottom: “The ICC’s ability to target American nationals and those of other non-States Parties must end.”
Weeks earlier Rubio laid out the plan — pressure the court’s 125 member states to withdraw, sanction organizations that work with the court, ban its staff from traveling to the United States. Mock it if you like. It is working. Venezuela and Chad have announced they intend to leave, bringing to five the number of countries that have moved to pull out in the past year. Withdrawal takes a year to formalize, so the bleeding is not finished.
The court is furious, and says so. The sanctions “undermine the rule of law,” it declared, and amount to “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution.” When “judicial actors are threatened for applying the law,” it warned, “it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk.” It vowed to “continue to fully discharge its mandate with independence and impartiality.”
Impartial. This is the same court that in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the defense minister at the time — the elected leadership of a democracy fighting a war it did not start, and one that is not a member of the court either.
The critics lined up on cue. Balkees Jarrah, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, called the sanctions “the latest example of the Trump administration’s utter contempt for international law and a naked attempt to shield American and Israeli officials implicated in serious crimes from justice.” Note the word implicated — an allegation dressed up as a verdict. Human Rights Watch and three other groups sued the administration last week in the Southern District of New York, arguing the executive order and related sanctions amount to a “blatantly illegal attack on international justice” that should be struck down. Fine. Let them try it in an American court, in front of an American judge, under a Constitution somebody actually ratified. That is how this is supposed to work.
Japan objected too. “The announced measures are very unfortunate,” said Toshihiro Kitamura, press secretary at Japan’s Foreign Ministry. Noted.
And here is the part the other side will wave in your face, so let’s put it on the table ourselves. Canadian judge Kimberly Prost, sanctioned last year, lost access to her credit cards. “Your whole world is restricted,” she told the Associated Press.
That is a real cost to a real person, and nobody should pretend otherwise. But it is also the answer to the question this court has never been willing to face. For years the ICC has claimed the power to reach across borders and restrict the world of anyone it chose — soldiers, ministers, prime ministers — with no election behind it, no appeal to any electorate, no accountability to a single voter anywhere on earth. It apparently never occurred to the men and women in those robes that the reach might one day run the other way.
Now it does. And that, not any grievance about credit cards, is the actual complaint.
Sovereignty is not a technicality. It is the difference between a government answerable to its people and a tribunal answerable to no one. Trump and Rubio picked the right fight.
Sources:
- Fox News, “Trump administration sanctions sitting president of the International Criminal Court for ‘abuses of power,'” Aug. 19, 2026 — foxnews.com
- NBC News / Associated Press, “ICC slams U.S. decision to sanction the court’s president and senior prosecution lawyer,” Aug. 19, 2026 — nbcnews.com